Countries are starting to get into the patent business; countries like France and South Korea are setting up patent entities to protect domestic companies. "Intellectual Discovery presents itself as a defensive alliance: if a South Korean company finds itself targeted in a lawsuit, for instance, it can access the patents being compiled by Intellectual Discovery to hit back." I support this. If, say, a small Dutch company were to come under unfair patent aggression by bullies like Apple and Microsoft (quite likely these days), I damn well expect my government to protect them from it. If you can't fix the system, work with it. As simple as that.

"Taxes. I repeatedly mentioned government or government funded NGOs. That sounds bad, but as I mentioned to Yasmin, using taxes this way makes people take notice, and it forces the question to be asked during evaluation: how much is this patent worth to society?"

Taxes are high enough I say. I honestly don't think we could afford it, the US national debt is enormous.

"It does solve some scalability issues, mostly by reducing the input."

Do you think there'd be fewer submissions from people who will have nothing to loose by filing, and don't even have to go to court anymore to get a payout?

"Remember, the payout is tied to actual proven research costs."

"No more rounded corners or slide to unlock lawsuits because they wouldn't have been granted in the first place."

I understand your intentions, although once lawyers get ahold of it those intentions won't matter

Ultimately someone in the patent office has to decide what it's worth with far fewer resources than they need to cross check the entire history of prior art in the field. The current patent system sets them up to fail, how does your proposal help these patent clerks succeed?

"Taxes. I repeatedly mentioned government or government funded NGOs. That sounds bad, but as I mentioned to Yasmin, using taxes this way makes people take notice, and it forces the question to be asked during evaluation: how much is this patent worth to society?"

Taxes are high enough I say. I honestly don't think we could afford it, the US national debt is enormous.

The budget of NASA is half a percent.

As I mentioned in my reply to your other comment, don't you think you're actually paying more, currently, to have silly patents go through the courts? Wouldn't you rather spend some money up front than to spend a lot more money later on to fix something stupid?

"It does solve some scalability issues, mostly by reducing the input."

Do you think there'd be fewer submissions from people who will have nothing to loose by filing, and don't even have to go to court anymore to get a payout?

They have a lot to lose. Their time. And the possibility of being caught for fraud in their research costs documentation.

The current patent system sets them up to fail, how does your proposal help these patent clerks succeed?

By making validation happen at the earliest level like it should be. Get the taxpayers involved, and you'll get the protests. Think about how conservatives rant about teachers being paid too much. Think about how much scrutiny a publicly funded system would get and how much crap companies are going to get for applying for rounded corner patents?

I imagine a Tea Party redneck internal monologue going something like this: "If rounded corners is an invention, then I'll be a monkeys uncle. And I ain't no liberal evilutionist".

You'll get everyone arguing for more validation up front (more patent clerks and more funding) so that they can avoid paying even more for a worthless patent.